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Grapheel Newsletter: September 2017

With so much exciting stuff in the pipelines, we have decided to start collating all of our little tidbits into one convenient bite-sized newsletter that will be published on the first Monday of every month henceforth. Signed up users and volunteers will get these shot straight into their email inboxes each and every month; if you’re jealous and want that too, you can subscribe to our newsletter here.

GRAPHEEL NEWS: SEPTEMBER 2017

IRIS developments

IRIS has now closed its testing period, and we’ve spent the summer carefully removing the app’s training wheels. Our developers, namely Tim Lingard, David Turner, and our intern Joanne Sheppard, are working tirelessly at it and we look forward to the official launch of the app. A sincere thank you all of you were part of the testing period; the feedback gained from it was invaluable and we’re so very grateful for everyone who contributed.

Upcoming Events

– British Science Festival: 7th September

Grapheel is tremendously excited to be part of 2017’s British Science Festival: an annual event by the British Science Association that showcases new scientific advancements in Great Britain as well as being incredibly fun. Grapheel will be presenting at 19:00-23:00 in Brighton Museum, showing how we can interactively learn about cosmology and physics by using various visual-to-audio sensory substitution devices along with other IRIS related presentations. You can read more about the British Science Festival here and read more about in some of our blog posts, the first one here and the second one here.

– Interact Conference: 14th September

On this day, the University of Birmingham will be home to the Interact Conference. This event is co-hosted by STFC, IoP, and SEPnet, and the focus is to learn about how to reach out to demographics that are traditionally less prominent in STEM — be that by gender, income, disability, or any other characteristics. As this is naturally very relevant to Grapheel and our objectives, we very much look forward to being part of the discussion there. Read more about it on SEPnet’s website here.

– TEDx Talk: 16th September

This TEDx event in Margate, Kent is themed “Thinking Differently” — a concept that our founder Daniel Hajas is all too familiar with after having adapted to life as a BVI person himself when he lost his sight at 17. Daniel is going to be talking about how he sees science, both literally and metaphorically, and how he envisions Grapheel and IRIS to be influential in the future of accessible STEM education. It is on from 10 am until 2 pm, and tickets are still on sale. You can buy tickets and read more about the event here.

Other news

An enormous thank you to our intern, Joanne Sheppard, who joined our team during the summer to contribute to some of the under-the-hood IRIS code. She’s been a fantastic asset to our team and we look forward to continue working with her in the future. Wishing you all the best of luck and have a wonderful time in South Korea!

That’s everything from us for now. Don’t forget to keep up to date throughout the month by checking this blog, by following us on Twitter, or liking us on Facebook.